DAILY QUICK READ - JULY 26, 2016

Cats are Next

New Zealand has gone “all in” to eliminate invasive species in order to protect native species.  Many of the native species are flightless birds in an environment that 900 years ago had virtually no predatory species.  Once the rats, stoats and possums are gone, cats (a most invasive species) might be next.  I’m good with that.

It's a goal that was formally announced Monday by New Zealand's prime minister, John Key. "While once the greatest threat to our native wildlife was poaching and deforestation, it is now introduced predators," Key said in a statement.

He noted that rats, possums and stoats — which are not native to the islands of New Zealand — kill 25 million native birds each year, and also prey on lizards and other native species.

The invasive species cost the country about 3.3 billion New Zealand dollars (more than $2.3 billion) per year, according to the government's estimates. They can also carry disease.

Gareth Morgan, a businessman, activist and philanthropist who has strongly advocated for a predator-free New Zealand, also runs an initiative called "Cats To Go." It tries to persuade New Zealand's cat-lovers to keep their pets indoors or walk them on leashes — and, when they die, not to replace them. And all unowned or unclaimed cats in New Zealand should be euthanized, Morgan argues.

His position has sparked claws-out debate about the future of cats in New Zealand.

For now, the government is hinting toward a hard line on feral cats but not on house pets. Under the government's new program, Prime Minister Key told Radio New Zealand, feral cats on conservation lands would be targeted as predators, just like rats, stoats and possums.

But, what about dogs?  They’re an invasive species.  Wait, they part of the solution,not part of the problem.

Visit the docks in Auckland, New Zealand, on any day of the week and you might just see Piri puttering around, clad in a smart orange vest and going about her work with the utmost professionalism. Observe as she wanders to some bags and does a thorough search, before clambering aboard a barge to take a good sniff around.

Piri is a ratter, a specially trained dog who can sniff out rodents. Her job is to find rats and mice that might be hiding in luggage or in crevices aboard ships that are heading for islands around Auckland. These islands are home to some of New Zealand’s most threatened and beloved native species, like the country’s national animal, the very stout and very cute kiwi, and the world’s only nocturnal flightless parrot, the kakapo.

One of New Zealand’s greatest conservation accomplishments, these so-called “island sanctuaries” are entirely pest- and predator-free, allowing these endangered animals to thrive without threat.

Dogs, man's right hand.  Cats, get real.

It’s Not the Tour de France

It’s about making lives more productive and safer.  Oh, and it’s about climate change, believe it or not.

One thing so many drivers and politicians complain about when protesting new bike lanes is that they are sitting there empty while they are stewing away in their cars stuck in congested traffic. Or they complain that people on bikes are all white middle class dilettantes while real people need cars to get to real jobs.

But new research from the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) concludes that decent protected bike infrastructure not only dramatically increases the number of people riding and reduces the number of people injured or killed, but that it is important for social and economic equity. According to the study, PDF:

Cycling is a fact of life in many low-income communities. Analysis of national Census data by the Kinder Institute for Urban Research shows that 49% of the people who bike to work earn less than $25,000 per year. In 2014, PeopleForBikes reported that the lowest-income households—Americans making less than $20,000 per year—are twice as likely as the rest of the population to rely on bikes for basic transportation needs like getting to work.

Extinction Tipping Point

We aren’t going to have 400,000 years to work things out.

Experts say the results of a study of ancient zooplankton fossils offer a warning about mass extinction events: There’s a tipping point, at which dramatic declines in populations begin.

The researchers studied nearly 22,000 fossils and found that ancient plankton communities began changing in important ways as much as 400,000 years before massive die-offs ensued during the first of Earth’s five great extinctions.

The research, published in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focused on large zooplankton called graptolites. It suggests that the effects of environmental degradation can be subtle until they reach a point of no return.

Extinction Driven by Habitat Loss

We are the problem. 

When natural habitats are lost, species lose the physical space and resources they need to continue growing and expanding. Habitats are usually lost due to human activity, such as building roads or clear-cutting a forest. After such a disturbance, the habitat can no longer support the number of species that live there and species begin to disappear until the habitat reaches a new normal. The difference between the old and new amounts of biodiversity the habitat can support is called the "extinction debt."

Several factors influence the timeline in which the biodiversity loss process plays out, but Newmark says that all groups they studied, even those thought to be resistant to extinction such as plants, showed the same pattern. These similar patterns emerge if species loss is calculated in terms of average population size and time for a new generation to arise for these taxonomic groups.